(1) Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to a communication system, and more particularly to a communication system which is arranged to control communications in a network.
(2) Description of the Related Art
As a cellular phone and a personal handyphone system (called the PHS) are prevailing, more variable services for mobile terminals are being supplied. As one example, a location reporting system may be referred which operates to report a location of a mobile terminal to a center station. This system is arranged to receive the electric waves from the PHS, collect the location information contained in the electric waves, and report the location of the PHS to the center station.
The foregoing location reporting system, however, needs a troublesome operation of obtaining the location information from the center station through a terminal that has inquired its location. Moreover, what is executed by the center station is only to obtain the location of the mobile terminal and to passively report the obtained location in response to an access to be given by the location-inquired terminal. Hence, this location reporting system has been less practical.
On the other hand, the recent abrupt expansion of the Internet users results in increasing the traffics of IP packets. Further, the mobile terminals such as the cellular phones are prevailing more. These circumstances make the development of the fast IP communication in the mobile environment progressing quite rapidly.
Under these circumstances, a request is on the rise for easily utilizing a networking communication about the location information from a business or personal point of view.